Donald Trump and JD Vance may have avoided talking about Project 2025 but Tim Walz is determined to make the controversial conservative guidebook the focus of the touted first prime time vice presidential debate on October 1.
After agreeing to take part in the proposed CBS debate, Walz went on the attack and made it clear he will be targeting the 900-page blueprint that calls for a ban on sales of the abortion pill, a crackdown on “woke” ideology, the dismantling of the Department of Education and other federal bodies and the sacking of thousands of civil servants.
“JD Vance shares Donald Trump’s dangerous and backward agenda for this country,” Walz wrote in a fund-raising email to supporters in which he says: “Folks, I just agreed to debate JD Vance on October 1. Boy, I’ve got to tell you, I can’t wait to debate the guy.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Heck,” adds Walz. “He even wrote the foreword for the architect of the Project 2025 agenda.”
The Democratic Party’s vice presidential hopeful is referring to Vance’s praise in the foreword of an upcoming book by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts that he says articulates “a genuinely new future for conservatism.” The Heritage Foundation is the conservative think tank behind Project 2025.
“I am going to do my best to make sure everyone watching our debate knows just that,” writes Walz.
Vance hasn’t yet confirmed he will take part in the Oct.1 debate on CBS, but he said he “strongly suspects” he will participate and says he would like to debate Walz “more than once.”
“But we’re not going to do one of these fake debates where they don’t actually have an audience there, where they don’t actually set the parameters in a way where we can have a good exchange of ideas,” he told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Trump has disavowed Project 2025 and Vance has also sought to distance himself from the document. But CNN has said that at least 140 people connected to the Trump administration have been involved in the plan.
